Love
by Tovaras
Summary: Zevran ponders about love and just how much his beloved Grey Warden has taught him about it.


**Dragon Age: Origins**

**Love**

_Zevran Aranai/__(Any gender) PC_

_Zevran ponders the meaning of love as he finally starts understanding just how love works._

***

What is this word that my Grey Warden seems able to use at almost anything of pleasure?

This word that seemingly can be as weak as an infant or as strong as the mightiest of dragons?

Love.

What is that?

My Grey Warden uses it for many things.

Claims of loving the forest, loving the rain. The times spent outside together, breathing the air (even as heavily scented by the smell of wet dog as it is) and wandering the forest, just talking and indulging in activities of love.

My Grey Warden also loves well-roasted boar-meat and the sweet wine introduced to us from the Tranquil mages in the Tower of Magi.

But what puzzles me is that my Grey Warden also claims to love me more than anything in this world. That I am the most important thing in the life my love lives and something that cannot be lost without inflicting my lover great pain.

And I think I am finally beginning to understand the meaning of this word; Love.

I was raised in a world where love held no meaning. What room was there for love in a whore-house, where the only thing needed was coin and lust. I knew passion, lust and desire, but I have started to learn the link between the joining of bodies and love.

My Grey Warden taught me that. The passion and desire to touch and be touched by hands you know only touch you. To touch a body that belongs only to you and know that you will be blessed by the sight of your beloved when you wake up. To give with all your heart, mind and soul as well as your body.

What room was there for love in a world where murder was your job and friendship was as poisonous as darkspawn blood? You could trust no one, because even your best friend would give you away at the blink of an eye. I knew how to manipulate, to use and to exploit weaknesses in order to get my way and to protect myself.

My Grey Warden taught me how to exploit friendship instead. The willingness to give up your secrets and weaknesses to others, simply because you trusted them. And I am able to trust my Grey Warden now and I would give up my life just to stand by my lover's side.

And it was there, by my beloved's side, that I started to understand love and all its meanings.

Love is when you want something so badly that your body, mind and soul are screaming for it when it is out of reach. When your heart is filled with an emptiness and you know it will only be reminded once the one you love is back in your arms.

Love is the warmth that fills you from head to toe from just a touch or even a glance from your beloved.

Love is seeing only your beloved, thinking that they are the most beautiful thing in the entire world, even if they are covered in dirt, blood and other unmentionable things.

Love is the pride you get when your beloved praise you and shows you just how much you mean to them, and you know in your heart that it is words of truth.

Love is the passion that is between you as you make love; the heat, desire and passion taking to greater heights just because you are being with the one that makes you feel the best.

Love is the simple things, like small gifts and attention, just to let them know that you are there and you appreciate that fact.

And love, I discovered, is the willingness to give up your life for someone, even if they don't expect it to do it for them. If anything, they expect you to live.

And it is there I started to understand the feelings that were filling my very being, filling my very soul, and making a heart that I was sure was not functioning start beating again.

I am slowly learning the meaning of love, the meaning of the feelings that has filled me every since I was invited into my Grey Wardens tent and was allowed to touch the wardens body intimately for the first time.

I am learning the joys of devoting myself to one person alone; simply because I can give everything that I am to that person and know I get the same in return. Instead of satisfying my lust and desires, I get to satisfy a hunger in my heart, my soul and my mind.

And now, as we have faced the greatest of dangers and lived to tell the tale, perhaps now I will be able to say the words I have longed to say ever since my Grey Warden said it to me. Now that I am free from the Crows and under the protection of the king of Ferelden as well as the grand hero of said land, I expect I will have an eternity to enjoy with the one I want.

Because I love my Grey Warden more than life itself.

And it is only fair that I tell my beloved just that.


End file.
